A Blast, an Ethereum layer-2 network, announced on Friday (2) that it will shut down its operations after concluding that maintenance costs had come to exceed the revenue generated by the blockchain. The project said it did not see a viable path to making the network economically sustainable.
With the decision, users must transfer their assets from Blast to the Ethereum mainnet. The process will begin with the withdrawal of the assets held through Lido, a step that should take approximately one week and will leave withdrawals temporarily unavailable.
When withdrawals resume, the waiting period will be reduced to 24 hours. Blast's normal interface will remain available for withdrawals until October 26. After that date, funds can still be recovered, but it will be necessary to interact directly with Blast's bridge contracts on Ethereum.
The team said it will publish instructions before the interface shutdown and that the priority during the process will be preserving users' access to assets.
Blast TVL fell to about US$ 32 million
The decision comes after a sharp reduction in the network's economic activity. Data from DeFiLlama puts the total value locked in Blast DeFi applications at about US$ 32 million, far below the more than US$ 2 billion reached during the project's peak in 2024.
Blast emerged in November 2023 with a round of US$ 20 million, which included participation from Paradigm and Standard Crypto. The network sought to differentiate itself from other layer-2 solutions by offering native yield for ETH and stablecoins.
Its mainnet was launched in February 2024, after attracting billions of dollars in deposits even before the network's full opening.
In the shutdown announcement, the team said it had launched Blast with the goal of building a blockchain capable of sustaining itself financially, but that the relationship between costs and revenue no longer justified continuing the operation.
